30th May 2016. Zwolle, The Netherlands.

Today Darren was working so I washed the van, that’s when I realised how big and dirty it was!

It did give me the opportunity to speak to a Swiss lady though.  She told me that she and her husband owned a boat in the marina.  Apparently they kept their boat there during the winter but next week they were going to sail to Belgium and France on the canals.  She said the advantage of being retired was that you could sail as long as you liked during the good weather and the advantage of having a boat or a motorhome is that you take your home with you, she was lovely to chat to but her husband appeared with the car so she decided she’d better stop chatting and hopped in the car.  Before she left she also told us to stock up on alcohol before going to Scandinavia because it’s very expensive there.

After I had finished cleaning the outside of the van Darren and I cycled to the outskirts of town to do some shopping.  The bridge we went over was brilliant it had steep stairs but the bikes had a gutter to roll the wheels up and down the slope.

My bike basket is brilliant, we filled it with food plus bits for the van (two hose connectors and two soap dishes) and also hung a bag of food on Darren’s bike then cycled back to the marina.  We detoured into a park on the way back from the shops and sat on a bench to eat the small picnic we’d just bought, fresh bread rolls to dip in a pot of  hummus, however when we broke the rolls open we discovered they had dried fruit in them so the hummus came home with us and we just ate the rolls and very nice they were too.

When we got back to the van we put the chairs out and, overlooking the marina, we sat for a short while eating coffee and fruit until it suddenly began raining, it’s lucky we didn’t stay too long in the park after all or we’d have had to cycle back in the rain.

There was a lot of thunder, lightning and heavy rain for a couple of hours so we watched Vikings of the TV.

When it eventually cleared up and the birds started chirping again we decided to go out for an evening walk however we explored a bit further this time and jogged/walked back.

It’s been such a lovely day.

One thing we’ve noticed since being in The Netherlands and Belgium is the lack of motorhomes with British number plates, we’ve only seen one and that was on a motorhome that spent one night in Venlo.

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